Passengers on London's busiest Tube line face months of disruption as Northern Line Bank branch trains won't stop at Kennington

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Northern Line customers completed 294m journeys last year (Source: Getty)

Rebecca Smith

Passengers on the Northern Line face four months of disruption from mid-May for work on the line's extension to Battersea, when Bank branch trains won't be stopping at Kennington.

There will be no interchange between the Bank and Charing Cross branches at Kennington from Saturday 26 May until mid-September 2018.

A temporary timetable will be introduced to deliver more frequent and direct trains to and from Morden on the Charing Cross branch, but there will be a reduced service on the Bank branch, so TfL has warned it will be busier. The Victoria Line is also set to be more crowded as passengers look for alternative routes.

The disruption is for work to create four new customer passageways as part of work on the £1.2bn Northern Line extension, to make it easier and quicker for customers to change between different branches of the Northern Line at the station.

The extension from Battersea to Kennington via Nine Elms is due to be completed in 2020, and will be the first major extension to a Tube line since the Jubilee Line in the late 1990s.

The Northern Line extension:

Kennington station will remain open for the duration of the work, with customers able to board trains northbound via the Charing Cross branch, and southbound to Morden.

Northern Line disruption dates:

Saturday 26 May until mid-September 2018

No Bank branch trains will stop at Kennington station

Stuart Harvey, TfL’s director of major projects, said:

We apologise to Northern Line customers and to local residents for the disruption this will cause to their journeys.

The Bank branch platforms at Kennington are simply too narrow to allow us to safely carry out this vital work behind hoardings while keeping the platforms open.

Running Bank branch trains through Kennington without stopping will allow us to build the additional passageways we need in the quickest and least disruptive way possible, and are essential to enable customers to access the new Northern Line extension when it opens.

TfL said more detailed travel advice will be available ahead of the work, including posters and leaflets at affected stations.

Last year, Northern Line customers completed 294m journeys, making it the busiest Tube line. It runs through both Waterloo and King's Cross St Pancras Tube stations - the two busiest on the network.